How to get the new ‘Duality’ Exotic Shotgun: perks

A new Season of Destiny 2 content is finally upon us and with it comes 100 new Season Pass ranks to obtain shiny new toys from.

As has become the norm for the past few Seasons, there is a brand new Exotic that is available exclusively to this Season Pass too.

For Season of the Hunt this Exotic is the ‘Duality’ Shotgun.

How to Get

As said before this Exotic can only be obtained through the Season Pass. The weapon is available immediately at rank 1 of the Season Pass for those Guardians who have paid $10USD for the Premium track.

If you have decided to not pay for the Premium track fear not as Duality will become available at rank 35 for the Free track.

Duality has an Exotic Catalyst quest that can be grabbed from the Gunsmith. To complete this quest the player must complete the following:

• Earn 300 points from Strike, Crucible and Gambit matches. Wins award more progress. This progress can also be increased by obtaining the Catalyst Quest Boosts from the Premium Season Pass track at ranks 11 and 22.
• Defeat 50 Guardians with Duality
• Defeat 100 targets with Duality slug rounds

Once this is done the player will be rewarded with the catalyst but this will also need to be completed before it can be properly added onto the weapon. I cannot speak for what the actual objectives will be since I have yet to unlock the catalyst.

Judging from past catalysts it could be something along the lines of ‘Kill 1000 enemies with Duality’ or possibly ‘Kill 500 enemies with Duality slug rounds and 500 enemies with Duality pellet rounds’.

This catalyst, once completed and slotted into the weapon, will add +18 Range and +2 rounds to the magazine.

Perks

Compression Chamber - Fires a pellet spread in hip-fire or a single high-damage slug while aiming.

On Black Wings - Pellet final blows grant a stacking precision damage and reload speed buff. Precision hits with slugs extend the duration"

To put is simply, Duality is an elegant amalgamation of both pellet and slug Shotguns.

Review

How Duality works is you chain kills with the pellet hip-fire form of the gun to build up stacks of ‘On Black Wings’ to then gain a large damage increase on the next few slug precision hits.

The ‘On Black Wings’ buff lasts approximately 6-7 seconds and does not have any kind of on screen timer.

This timer is reset whenever another stack of ‘On Black Wings’ is gained. Hitting a precision hit while the buff is active adds approximately 2-3 seconds to the timer. It is currently unknown what is the max number that ‘On Black Wings’ can stack up to.

The current limit is 6 but that is because that is the max number of rounds in the magazine. However, the catalyst gives an extra 2 rounds in the magazine so it is possible that ‘On Black Wings’ can go above 6 stacks.

There is some work around to this though. Using an Exotic like Transversive Steps can bypass the reload mechanic and can refill the magazine without losing the buff. By using this method it can be seen that On Black Wings actually caps out at x7

I did some quick damage testing at Light 1058 on the Hive Acolytes in the K1 Revelation Lost Sector on the Moon. All of these below numbers are for a precision hit with the slug round.

• Base Damage - 35, 804
• Buff x1 - 38, 604 (7.8%)
• Buff x2 -  44, 205 (23.5%)
• Buff x3 - 47, 005 (31.3%)
• Buff x4 - 49, 805 (39.1%)
• Buff x5 - 52, 606 (46.9%)
• Buff x6 - 55, 406 (54.7%)
• Buff x7 - 55, 406 (54.7%)

Not sure what was happening with the x6 and x7 buffs having the same damage values. I retested this multiple times and kept getting the same values, not really not sure if it's bugged or not.

For reference, a First In Last Out slug shotgun, which has 70 Impact to Duality’s 80, only does marginally less damage at 35,289

My immediate reaction when using Duality is that it seems like the epitome of the saying “Jack of all trades, master of none”, especially in PvE. While Duality is unique in that it can fire both pellets and slugs, for obvious balance reasons it cannot outclass other shotguns that just use a single firing option.

If you want to clear out enemies a rapid-fire shotgun with Auto-Loading Holster and a damage increasing perk will most likely do a better job. If you need Boss DPS then a First In Last Out with Vorpal Weapon will perform better than Duality as it does good DPS without needing to generate stacks on lesser enemies. An Exotic Heavy weapon can also still be used with First In Last Out, like Anarchy, for even more DPS.

However, Duality will begin to out DPS First In Last Out once at least 2 stacks of the buff have been acquired. This, combined with Transversive Steps, can lead to a large advantage in DPS for Duality over First In Last Out if Anarchy isn't being used as well.

If you are able to reliably stack up On Black Wings and keep the buff active through hitting precision hits on the boss, Duality is able to achieve one of the highest DPS values for Special weapons in the game. It just requires a lot of setup and work around achieving it.

Duality really does shine in PvP though. The weapon is able to take down Guardians with a precise headshot from great ranges while still being able to rely on the pellet shot if an enemy manages to close the distance. Since slugs are not able to 1-shot to the body, and pellets lack range, this allows the weapon to easily cover its own weaknesses.

What Duality lacks in clear strengths it makes up for in sheer versatility, which I guess is a strength in its own.

At the end of the day though this weapon is just plain fun to use and to top it all off is one of the most beautiful looking weapons that has ever been in the franchise.